Tag: mission

What Hershey’s Teaches About Losing Your Core Identity

Yesterday, in what felt like an April Fool’s headline, Hershey’s signaled a renewed focus on… chocolate.

Some of their products had shifted to “chocolate compound coating” instead of real chocolate. It’s easier to work with, more temperature stable, and cheaper to scale. From an operations or investor standpoint, that sounds like smart innovation.

But it’s not chocolate.

Around the same time, Hershey’s updated its vision to become a “leading snacking powerhouse.” As of 2025, their strategic language doesn’t even include the word “chocolate.”

That makes sense on paper. They’ve expanded well beyond their legacy products.

But it raises a bigger question: at what point does diversification start to dilute your core identity?

Vision statements are supposed to be broad and aspirational. They create room to grow. But they’re also supposed to anchor what makes a company distinct.

Hershey’s isn’t just another snack company. It’s one of the most recognizable chocolate brands in the world.

I’m glad to see a renewed focus on chocolate.

The more interesting question is how they drifted from it in the first place.

What does it look like when you’re done?

I was recently approached by a small organization working on a stalled WWII bomber restoration. They’d been working on the project for decades and were looking for help moving forward. They had the plane sitting in a barn and were struggling to generate enough interest to continue their work. They had a website. They had a small group of volunteers. But they weren’t able to raise money.

It was clear to me 10 minutes into our conversation: they had no vision. Why were they doing this? What did they want to achieve? I asked a fairly basic question: what does it look like when you’re done? Is the plane sitting on a pad for people to walk around and admire? Or is it in a museum when you can climb inside and sit in the cockpit? Or is it actually flying again so people can admire it at airshows throughout the US? Even within this small group there was no consensus on the most basic question: what they were actually trying to build. Without that, even basic questions of cost, funding, and success were impossible to answer.

They thought their problem was visibility, so they initiated a letter writing campaign. They had designed merchandise. They were even in talks with a local chain of movie theaters to run a small ad during the previews.

They had no mission statement. And they had no organizational goals.

Even the letter writing campaign itself was lacking, as the letters themselves didn’t communicate the vision (since they had none) and had no call to action for the recipients.

You may hear people scoff about vision statements as “corporate speak,” or even worse “consultant speak,” but the fact is truly successful organizations, from businesses to non-profits, use them to articulate their “why.” Why they exist. What they want to achieve.

Without a clear answer to that question, everything else becomes guesswork.

How much money should they be trying to raise? Who should they be asking for support?

Even the restoration work depends on the answer. A static display aircraft, a museum exhibit, and a flying warbird are three completely different missions, with different costs, timelines, and needs.

But until the group decides what the airplane is supposed to become, none of those decisions can be made with confidence.

They believed their biggest obstacle was visibility. That if more people knew about the project, the support would follow. But awareness alone can’t solve a lack of direction.

People don’t rally around activity. They rally around a destination.

Before an organization worries about marketing, fundraising, or publicity, it needs to answer a much simpler question:

What does it look like when you’re done?

Until that question has a clear answer, everything else is just motion.